20 Most Messed Up Deaths From The Star Trek Movies
Star Trek painted a grim portrait at the pictures. Worse: the popcorn is replicated!
By now, we've covered most of the most messed up deaths in Star Trek on the small screen. It's time to scale up, to double up, to the big. The difference is in aspect ratio, and in number of entries on the list.
Were it not for the movies, and the fan phenomenon, Star Trek, in live action anyway, would have died a death in 1969. Just another TV show. A decade later, The Motion Picture resuscitated the franchise but was deathly slow and slaughtered by critics.
Enough of a box office success, Trek's first theatrical outing didn't kill the chance for a second. 46 years on, the film count now stands at 14, with a significantly higher mortality rate — from main characters and major miscreants, to minor roles and random redshirts.
As we have seen for our TV lists, a smaller budget has never been an excuse for a lack of lethal imagination. A larger one is hardly a guarantee of murderous creativity. Combine money with a delightfully twisted mind, however, and you get some of the grisliest demises in all of Star Trek. Even the least loved of the movies contain some of the worst ways to go.
For this list, there will be one death from each of the fourteen films, with… carry the one, multiply by the intermix ratio, add the number of whales, fail the Academy entrance exam… six to spare! Writer's choice. 'Death' also becomes the messenger, so aim well!
20. Captain Randolph?!
Let's start on something more positive, if only to slowly shatter your illusions. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home ranks highly in fan estimations in good part because of its apparent lack of death. Director Leonard Nimoy had decided early on that The Voyage Home would be a different kind of movie. Quoted in The Art of Star Trek, he said,
[There would be] no dying, no fist-fighting, no shooting, no photon torpedoes, no phaser blasts, no stereotypical 'bad guy.' I wanted people to really have a great time watching this film […] [to] lose themselves, and enjoy it.
Vijay Amritraj, the actor and tennis star who played Captain Joel Randolph of the Yorktown in The Voyage Home, wasn't quite on the same page, however. Speaking to The Indian Express in 2013, Amritraj noted, "I did Star Trek IV, they killed me in that one".
Things were certainly looking bleak for the Yorktown after contact with the whale probe. In a brief message to Starfleet Headquarters, Captain Randolph reported that his ship had been without power for three hours, that "non-essential crew" had been given "hiber-sedatives" to reduce "consumption of life support reserves". The chief engineer was then attempting to rig a "makeshift solar sail" as a last-ditch effort for survival.
The truth is we don't know the ultimate fate of the Yorktown. According to The Star Trek Encyclopedia, Gene Roddenberry suggested that a ship called Yorktown had gone on to become the Enterprise-A. Either way, that says nothing about Randolph and crew.
Already in the shooting script for Star Trek IV, dated 11 March 1986, was something much, much worse. Reporting in from the USS Shepard was communications officer Trillya, also seen, but not heard, on screen:
All attempts to reinstate main power have failed. Captain Clampett has quarantined all but minimal support crew due to failure of Bio-Sterilization capsules containing Vegan D virus, which has already killed fifteen crew members.
Not just 'the one with the whales'!